Been going through this one a bit recently in a puristy mood having sort of overlooked it before. Mixture of quirks and general playstyle things. Just a few notes, nothing comprehensive.

1. The usual Curse on level-up doesn't seem to trigger if you level in a subdungeon. This allows you to skip a bit of popcorn waste if you plan carefully.2. In general subdungeons also offer you more safe exploration space (no invisible shade space, can't be blinked into so can be saved up for the topside boss if you're fighting the shade boss first). Value them. I would recommend Smuggler's Den on this one, Pisorf and Endiswal both come recommended as well.3. Loads of magic damage enemies. Plenty of Undead. Personally I prefer not going for Dracul and Mystera on this one for just that reason.4. Pisorf is your top way of bypassing all the dungeon's gimmicks if you just want to blow Dragonface to pieces. Orc Wizard of Binlor is perhaps your best bet.5. Earthmother lets you do a bizarre piety spike on the topside boss with Greenblood's curse-removal antics if you fancy doing the Rogue + hitting things route.6. By contrast, if you want to get to know the niche rules and get to grips with Curse antics take in a Berserker. Magic damage enemies favour you and once you clean out the bottom you'll be in great shape for Dragonface but you'll need to understand the rules of the dungeon to make your headway and get there.7. Getting yourself cut off from the curse world too early will lose you XP. Keep your options open. Tempting to blow popcorn and exploration to deal with the Shade boss then find you don't have the resources for the Dragon.8. Unreachable map middle. Lemisi might be worth keeping just for this.9. Killing the Shade Boss isn't necessary.

1. I think I may have actually reported this in the bug thread once upon a time, or ment to but forgot.3. This is one of the (very few) reasons I didn't burn the entire map down with Goblin Mystera Socerer when I was doing VT clearings. EM, however is so good here, that you don't miss mystera who really, really doesn't work.4. Whoah, never thought of that. I did have fun with dedicated wonnafyt spam, though.5. EM also lets you slow down all the wraiths and gives you IMAWAL for curse management + mana refil after you've overexplored (which you probably will) and is quite godly on the level.7. Yep, curse management and staying in the curse world for leveling is quite important. I think I only really go back once after I've overexplored to pick stuff up, then return and kill the wraith, then pick the rest of the stuff and kill the dragon on a mostly fully explored map.8. Oh yes. Unless you've been using B2P.

Agreed about Cursed Oasis. It was made late in development cycle when the devs had a better understanding of the kinds of advanced strategies available. I was stuck on it for a long time, even longer than the dreaded Slime Pits.

Joining in on the chorus about Earthmother here. You'd think that a map full of plants would be bad for EM, but what it actually means is that you have tons of guaranteed targets for IMAWAL. You can rack up incredible amounts of piety with her. Just prep a burn salve in case you need to do some emergency plant clearing and you're godo to go. EM is best used to counter curse (Greenblood) and to counter blink (chained Entaglements). I call this approach to EM the "Utility Monster," a strategy that uses your piety for immediate problem solving rather than for making your character more powerful.

Lujo did a lot of stuff on this map with Goblin Sorcerers armed with the Codex. Entanglement is dreadfully powerful with the Codex, and even more so when you are using them on the Shades.

3. Loads of magic damage enemies. Plenty of Undead. Personally I prefer not going for Dracul and Mystera on this one for just that reason.

Actually, Dracul works exceptionally well in this dungeon since you often get stuck with no exploration in the end-game. Begin worship after having cleared out the shades from Curse World.

Agreed about Cursed Oasis. It was made late in development cycle when the devs had a better understanding of the kinds of advanced strategies available. I was stuck on it for a long time, even longer than the dreaded Slime Pits.

Definitely one of the best-designed and most unique dungeons in the game. I'm glad they added it in, and it makes me wonder what they might do if they created a bonus dungeon pack.

I love me a good namedrop! Yep, I've done terrible, terrible things in the cursed oasis, tiz true! There's one particular thing about why the Codex is so bloody good on this map, in fact that's how I "discovered" both the codex, the fact that it rules cursed oasis, and that the oasis is really, really easy if you prep right. And that there were more brutal, if not as simple minded, strats out there than just prepping Mystera on a Goblin Sorcerer. I was on a GobSocMystSpam VT clearing world tour, and that dungeon was giving me a hard time. So I was looking for ways to che... err, test the mechanics for power level, as it were, to find something to snag that badge while midlessly spamming fireballs as I have been everywhere else. And the thought occured that I didn't in fact know what happens when you heavy fireball a guy who allready has retaliate fireball. So I tried it on the dragon in cursed oasis. Turns out it works in your favor. Say, looks like an entry for the undocumented feature list!

This also works in Dragon Isles I suppose, so the codex makes fireballing bossess that were not ment to be fireballed quite easy (provided you can replenish both health and mana, ofc).

Blovski wrote:Sidestepper - just tried that thing - absolutely minced the dungeon. Did it with the Naga Cauldron, though, for the ridiculous overheal. Going to give it a shot on Vicious.

And we have a winner. Unstoppable too. Congrats, you have a VT Cursed Oasis strat

I'd say for Vicious you'll want the Naga Cauldron to reduce the amount of health wasted from your potions. I saved all potions for the bosses pretty much (along with Chaos Avatar, since less bonus XP) because on Vicious taking down opponents way ahead of you tends to end up being too resource intensive.